by Dani Collins
Mr. Hilroy followed and stood on the far side of the bed, helping her tuck the fitted sheet onto the mattress, billowing the flat sheet and placing it just so. When she reached for the comforter, he stopped her.
“I don’t even have a tissue to offer, just...” He plucked up the fabric of his shirt. “I’ve already left a few of my own tears on it.”
“I’m crying?” She touched her cheek and found it damp.
Mr. Hilroy gently turned her and lowered her to sit on the end of the bed. “I’m too tired and out of sorts to keep standing,” he said.
Manners, she thought, distantly admiring them.
And Harrison. Oh, Harrison.
“What a terrible thing,” Mr. Hilroy said into the gloom.
“Yes,” she agreed.
He reached to take her hand and pressed it between his own. It was a familiarity she never would have allowed at any other time in her life, especially from a stranger, but right now, she was unspeakably grateful.
Oh, Harrison.
L.C. was trying to master the use of a semi-colon per Edith Garvey’s instruction when Mercedes let herself into his side of the duplex.
He glanced up only long enough to identify her, not surprised she hadn’t knocked. The kids had started walking in like they owned the place since last week, when his lessons with Dayton had started.
Mercedes had admonished them, but L.C. genuinely didn’t mind. The neighborly visits of folks walking by, bringing toasters and motorized scooters for repair, were growing on him. Weirdly, he was discovering a sense of place and belonging he’d never known.
She lowered herself onto the second-hand, paint-spattered kitchen chair across from him, her sleek legs just inside his field of vision. And sniffed.
L.C. lifted his gaze.
Mercedes raised her hand, pushed her hair out of her eyes. Wiped a tear.
His heart stopped. “What’s wrong?”
Silence. Just a look that closed his throat.
“Not one of the kids?” He couldn’t bear it. He really couldn’t.
She shook her head, twisting her hands in her lap. “Harrison.” Her chin crinkled up and her tears rolled. One fell off her jaw. She swiped at it, sniffing again.
L.C. closed his eyes. He waited, praying she’d say something else, something that would take back what she’d just told him. He ground his teeth, holding back the flood of pain. Of anger. Harrison was old. It shouldn’t matter. But it did. He really liked that guy.
Fuck.
“He didn’t come to the board meeting,” she said in a cracked voice. “So Mr. Dolinsky and I went to check on him. The coroner is on the way, but it looks like he collapsed making his coffee this morning. I got his meds, though. The other day when he asked. You heard us, right? I went by his house and gave them to him that day so I don’t understand how...”
“It’s not your fault.” He opened his eyes to see her looking so lost and tortured, it tore something open in his chest.
“I, um...” She rubbed at her wet face. “I have a lot to do. I’m going to call Zack to get the kids, but I wanted to come tell you myself.”
“I can get the kids.”
“Can you?” Her hands kept twisting and twisting in her lap while her gaze hit his with apology, but with shadows of tough realism in the bottoms of her eyes.
He snorted, reminding himself never to underestimate her intelligence. The craving for alcohol clawed at him all the time and was roaring into a fury of need as he fought accepting this news. Please, please let some terrible mistake have been made, because once the truth really sank in—
“This is the one part of my job that totally destroys me,” Mercedes murmured, gaze dropping. Another tremor shook her lips. “He didn’t have any family. Pete Dolinski wants to do the eulogy, but he’s so upset.”
“I’ll go see him.”
“You don’t have to. Not if it will be hard for you.”
If he would get drunk with Pete, she meant. She looked at him like she knew he was mentally picking up his wallet and finding the quickest route to the nearest bar. It was only three blocks. He thought of it every day. Walking would take longer, but he could stop at the corner store for cigarettes. The thick, hot smoke would burn away this tightness in his throat.
“I have to go. People are waiting.” She stood. “I just wanted you to know.”
“I’ll call Zack.” He climbed to his feet so he could dig his phone out of his jeans pocket. While she waited, he left a message telling Zack to phone Mercedes on her number as soon as he was out of class, to confirm he could get the kids and watch them for the rest of the day. What else could he do for Harrison’s Mercy-girl?
The corner of Mercedes’s mouth lifted in a half-smile of gratitude. She reached for his hand, drawing it to her cheek so his knuckles pressed into the damp track of her tears.
“I wish I could stay with you, but this is my job. Will you try to hang on? Please? I have a lot to get through and I’m going to need you later.” She kissed the inside of his wrist and looked up at him, asking the impossible.
“Yeah,” he said, having no idea if he could.
She nodded and walked away, leaving him rubbing the damp of her tears into the back of his hand. Leaving him dying for a drink, thinking, Damn you, Harrison.
Mercedes came home late, silently opening her front door, emotionally numb, mind blank.
Zack slept between the kids on the pull-out, still dressed, his big body sprawled on top of the covers. Ayjia had curled into the hollow between his upraised arm, and his crooked knee. Dayton had his back to Zack, but his small body was tucked as close to Zack’s as possible without actually touching.
Mercedes reached to touch Zack’s bare foot, intending to shake him awake, but hesitated. She wasn’t ready for a fresh bout of questions and sorrowful looks. She wasn’t ready to face the children if they woke.
Moving to shut the patio door, she noticed L.C. next door, his silhouette black against the hill that rose up behind their duplex.
Instead of closing the glass door, closing him out, she went through and carefully closed it behind her.
He didn’t say anything. In the pale light cast by the single lamp he’d left on inside his own unit, she saw grief had etched lines into his shadowed face.
Remorse stabbed at her. She shouldn’t have left him alone all day. It hadn’t been fair. Grief was a sharp, cold knife for him, she was sure.
He didn’t move, but his arm reached out, a request for solace.
Silently opening the iron gate between their concrete pads, she slipped through and let him draw her into a one-armed hug.
Her arms reached to encircle him, her need for human contact acute. She’d been embracing frail bodies all day, careful of brittle bones and thin, loose skin. She’d been offering comfort and now took some in the hard strength of L.C.’s broad shoulders and muscled chest. In the deep, healthy breath he drew that expanded his chest under the side of her face.
Pressing her nose into the scent of him, his laundry-softened T-shirt and warm hard pecs, she felt the sadness that she’d been stifling all day catch in a welling sob.
His other arm came around her, cradling her close. His hand clutched the back of her head. His arms jerked in a convulsive way that suggested both taking and giving of comfort. Shared grief.
Oh, how she needed his strength. A body not withered with age, but vital and firm. She rubbed her face against his T-shirt, let her forehead nuzzle into the warmth of his neck, lifted her face so the stubble of his unshaved neck burned her lips.
He swallowed.
When she had told him she would need him later, she hadn’t meant sex. She had meant this, a hug. Commiseration. That’s all.
But her lips parted so she could taste his skin, faintly salty, absolutely male.
His chin dipped, butted briefly against hers. He found her mouth, pressed his damp lips to hers, licked in with a swift need that opened her to his deep kiss.
Gasping softly, she lift
ed onto tiptoes, increasing the pressure while her hands sought the hem of his T-shirt, then the skin beneath.
He shuddered and shuffled his feet, pressing her into the dark corner formed by the trellis that separated his patio from hers.
As she felt the warm brick against her back, she arched into the solid warmth of his insistent hips, writhed to feel more of his roaming hands. His urgent touch skimmed her waist, captured her breasts, cupped her skull, then her backside, crushing her breathless in his hungry clasp.
Unable to move, she still tried to imprint herself on him, aware of her own gasps, his labored breath. At some level, she knew they were both seeking escape. This was as much sorrow as passion, but she let it overtake her.
Silky air caressed her thighs and belly as her skirt climbed. She had fought letting this happen for good reasons, but angry rebellion grew in her now. She didn’t want to be sensible and cautious. She wanted to feel alive and take what was in front of her when it was offered. As he stroked her thighs, worked his hand inside her underpants, she ground herself into the firmness of his palm, catching a shimmer of lightning that erased all the pain.
He lifted his head, took his hand away and brought it to himself, opened his jeans.
Her skirt fell to cover her legs and she bunched it up herself, let him crush her further into the corner, lifted one leg to curl her calf behind his hip while he found her again, hooking aside the crotch of her panties and bending his knees, guiding himself to the center of her wetness.
Some sensible part of her knew she was casting off hard learned lessons and succumbing to impulsive, self-destructive behavior. Backsliding as addicts did in times of stress, but—
He filled her, so thick, so hard. She gasped, loving the stretch. The invasion. She clasped at the hot, iron-like stiffness inside her, dug her fingers into the flesh of his upper arms, the straining muscles in his biceps. He drew back and thrust in again. She met him, striving for her own pleasure, grinding against him, tightening her heel into his buttock to trap him deep, silently begging for every last inch of him to stay deep inside her.
He did the same, pressing past any sort of discomfort to a place of locked souls, holding her so tightly she struggled to breathe, holding himself deep, not thrusting, just clamoring for a tighter, closer, harder connection.
They struggled like that for long minutes, their movements abbreviated but intense, silent but for harsh, humid breaths and the whisper of clothing brushed aside and the friction of skin. The sounds of muted demand and greed and desperation. Fury, even. What she needed was eluding her. She wasn’t finding what she sought, but it was here damn it. She knew it was.
She wanted him to give it to her, the blind oblivion of acute pleasure. Sobbing against his neck, she pressed her open mouth against his skin, felt the dampness of tears. His? Hers? With impatient hands, she pushed at him with her hips, provoked him to withdraw a little, then used her leg to roughly draw him back.
He made a pained noise through his teeth at the roughness she was demanding. She pushed again and he slammed back. The primitive force caused a flash of pleasure, keen and strong. Cheek pressed to his slick cheek, fingers digging into his sweaty neck, she goaded for more and more, reveling in his animalistic thrusts, basic and crude, until the crisis loomed, a streak of silver light against a black horizon.
Too much, too much, and then...a near painful breaking. Release. Sweet, sweet release, thorough and final.
She went back into her side of the duplex without a word.
L.C. didn’t know what to say either, and felt a certain relief when she walked away.
Loss followed immediately, along with a return of the severe thirst for hard liquor.
He leaned back against the trellis, making a half-hearted effort to close his jeans over the erection that hadn’t completely subsided. Listened for her to come back.
He hadn’t used a condom. Really fucking stupid. Christ, did he never learn?
The idiocy, the sheer abandonment of consequence, closed his eyes. This was the reckless man he’d tried to leave in Liebe Falls. Really fucking stupid.
He wasn’t worried about disease. He was clean and doubted she’d be so thoughtless as to dose someone. He deserved it if she did, but if there was a baby...
He winced against the agonizing thought, finding it so bittersweet he closed his fists in agony.
Christ he wanted a drink.
Was that her coming back? No, just the faint noise of her using her bathroom.
He could go to a bar right now and no one would know. The thought had teased him all afternoon. He’d start with something neat and sharp. It would enter his bloodstream hot and fast.
The way he’d entered her.
He had hung on all afternoon and evening for her, because she had asked him to. He wanted to get drunk with her. Dance dirty, talk dirtier. He wanted to show her off and pick a fight if someone admired her too closely. He wanted to hold her.
He wanted to sleep beside her. Feel her warmth against him, smell her skin, brush her springy hair from tickling his lips.
He waited a minute longer, to see if she would come back. One more minute. If she came out, he’d stay here with her, but he would only give her one more minute before he left to find a drink.
The sun was beginning to stain the red cliff above him when Mercedes’s sliding door finally opened. Zack. He checked when he saw L.C.
“You been up all night?” Zack frowned with suspicion.
“I’m not drunk.” L.C. pushed himself away from the trellis where he’d stood since Mercedes had walked away, willing her to come back to him.
“Zack?” Her voice carried from inside. She came out, eyes puffy, hair wild, wearing a long T-shirt nightgown with books and wine glasses printed all over it. “I heard the door, thought it might be the kids.”
“No, they’re still sleeping.”
She glanced over her shoulder then stepped out enough to mostly shut the door behind her. “Thank you for staying with them yesterday. Were they upset?”
“Worried. They’ll be glad to see you.”
L.C. waited for her to look at him, but her gaze only touched him long enough for him to read self-consciousness in the extreme. He stole another peek at the way her braless nipples peaked the soft fabric of her nightgown.
“I, um, could probably use you again this afternoon,” she said to Zack. “If you have time. I need to make arrangements for the service.”
“Sure, fine.” Zack sent L.C. a look, caught him oggling. Damn kid was far too perceptive.
“Thanks.” Mercedes went into her place with a barely acknowledging nod toward L.C., closing just her screen.
Zack came through the gate and let it fall back into place with a loud clang. “Are you kidding me?” he demanded.
“Whatever you think—” L.C. began, voice hoarse from exhaustion and lack of use.
“Have you told her?”
About Lindsay, he meant. For all the understanding Zack gave him over Ester, there was none, absolutely sweet-fuck-all when it came to Lindsay. Which was why he couldn’t tell Mercedes about his daughter back in Liebe Falls. She would feel exactly the way Zack did. She would expect him to go home and be a father to his child.
He didn’t want to go back there. He didn’t want to leave here.
“Don’t you have any conscience at all? She’s in the worst possible frame of mind and you take advantage—”
“I swore I’d never hit you, Zackary, but today is the day if you don’t shut your fucking mouth.” It was an empty threat. He would kill anyone who lifted a finger against his kids, including himself, but he did clench a fist as his son continued to goad him.
“Go for it. You’re already halfway to being just like Pops. You might as well—”
The screen slid open with a hard bang on Mercedes’s side.
“Keep it down,” she said in a hissing tone. “You’ll wake the kids. And Zack, you might ask who was using who before you climb onto that high horse
of yours.”
The screen slammed back into place with a smack.
Zack reddened and glared at L.C. before he shouldered past him, into the house.
Chapter 17
The children were in school during the service that Mercedes arranged for Wednesday. By then, between the regular demands of her job, the delving into Harrison’s finances to arrange a cremation his estate could afford, and the midnight wake-up calls from the unsettled kids, she was exhausted.
She hadn’t even begun to think what effect Harrison’s absence would have on the board. If Edith Garvey ran for President, well, Mercedes wasn’t ready to contemplate what that would mean for her and the kids. Mrs. Garvey might have developed a slight affection for Dayton, but she was still a stickler for rules.
Mercedes hadn’t seen L.C. since the morning-after with Zack. He arrived at the service looking decent enough despite hair wet from a recent shower and a shirt with crease marks that suggested it had been torn out of the package ten minutes ago. His eyes were red and bruised. Drunk?
A ripping pain tore through her, but she didn’t dwell on it, focusing instead on getting through the service with some level of professionalism. The residents of Coconino needed to know they would be treated with respect and caring when their time came.
Harrison, not being a church goer, was being remembered here at the complex, in the big meeting room. It allowed more residents to attend and significantly cut costs.
The minute it was over, she stole into the first aid room, ostensibly seeking a bandage for the finger she’d pricked on a rose thorn, but secretly longing for its bed. Five minutes. She would just rest for five small minutes.
“Hey, M— Oh, sorry.”
L.C.’s voice came in along with a soft knock on the door. She opened her eyes and pushed to sit, severely disappointed she wouldn’t get a nap.
They stared at each other and she became ridiculously aware she was on a bed.
“What’s up?” She tried not to sound suspicious—or mad—that he might be drunk. Swinging her legs to dangle off the side, she tugged her skirt down over her knees. “I shouldn’t even think about napping. I’d be out for hours and miss getting the kids.”
